Suzanne Robinson Read online

  A RISKY INTERLUDE

  “I’ve never met a young lady who could quote Shakespeare, or who even wished to read him. You’re different,” Valin said.

  The sound of his voice zinged from her ears to her spine! She had to get away from him and compose herself. Drat. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t play a part she’d managed easily in the past?

  “You have mysteries about you, Miss Emily de Winter, and I’m going to solve them.”

  “What fancies, my lord.” Emmie lifted her skirts and walked up the stairs that led to the front door of Agincourt Hall.

  North mounted the stairs two at a time and planted himself in front of her. “You’re unnerved. I can see a tiny vein throbbing at your temple, and you’re breathing as hard as if you’d ridden in the Derby.” He narrowed his eyes as he regarded her. “I’m onto something, by Jove. And it’s important, by the look of you. Who would have thought?” She tried to go around him, but he stepped in her way, bent over her, and smiled lazily.

  “What are you hiding, Miss Emily de Winter?”

  THE TREASURE

  A Bantam Book / April 1999

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1999 by Suzanne Robinson.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80808-0

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  1

  London, 1860

  No one in Society thought Valin North had any right to be as disgruntled and miserable as he appeared. When he wasn’t glowering at someone, people agreed to call him handsome. Certainly he was rich, titled, and endowed with polished manners—when he bothered to employ them—and intelligence, and a family untouched by scandal.

  Thus on this fine April evening those invited by his aunt to a musical party at North’s town house found it unpardonable that their host wore a perpetually volcanic expression on his face. For his part, Valin Edward St. John North, Marquess of Westfield, wouldn’t have cared had he noticed that the various Society biddies clustered about the drawing room disapproved. He was in agony.

  Aunt Ottoline had invited yet another flock of eligible young ladies for him to meet, and Lady Millicent Amberley had cornered him. Valin winced as her voice attacked his defenseless ears. Lady Millicent was a racing champion of talkers; she rattled, babbled, and blathered without seeming to take a breath. Valin fixed his gaze on her flapping lips and in a dazed manner wondered that she could find so much to say about nothing.

  “And of course for summer I must have gowns of dimity, lawn, and chambray. For winter I prefer cashmere, merino, brocade, and velvet.”

  Valin cursed his aunt. Lady Millicent might have a fortune and be the daughter of a duke, but no amount of aristocratic resources made up for her babbling. When she began to describe her preferences in fabrics for evening wear, his brows met in the center of his forehead. He fixed her with his most frightening scowl, but Lady Millicent was entranced with the sound of her own words. FinenettedtullegauzetransparenttarlatanLyonssilk. The words ran together like the waters of a flood, causing Valin’s head to hurt.

  Then, just as he was about to bark at his tormentor, he felt a strange prickling along his spine, as though battalions of ants were beating a retreat down it. He looked up, over the heads of his guests, past footmen serving wine and finger sandwiches. Finally his gaze fastened on an old lady shrouded in mourning dress. She had white hair arranged in old-fashioned corkscrew curls and was wearing tinted spectacles.

  The peculiar creature was staring at him. Society ladies didn’t stare, at least, not openly. When their eyes met, she didn’t look away, but regarded him with composure through those smoky glass lenses. He glared back, expecting her to turn red and avert her gaze. Instead she squinted at him and smirked as if she knew how irritated he was and why.

  Valin swore to himself as he felt heat rising from his neck to his cheeks. No one smirked at him! Least of all pink-cheeked little old ladies shaped like plums. He would not be smirked at, by heaven. Battle-hardened soldiers in the Crimea had melted into their boots under his glare. His menacing stare would have been at home stalking gazelles on the plains of Africa. How dare she smirk at him as if he were a disgruntled street urchin?

  Renewing his efforts, Valin furrowed his brow, narrowed his eyes, and pulled himself up to his full height so that he could look down on the offending lady from the greatest altitude possible. He summoned a glower that belonged to a raging god on Olympus and impaled the old woman with it. To his astonishment, the lady’s veined nose wrinkled, and she did something he could hardly believe. She sniggered at him!

  Valin started toward the old woman, but Lady Millicent’s voice stopped him.

  “I know you’ll appreciate the lace on my gown, my lord. It’s Honiton.”

  His eyes widening, Valin growled and spun on his heel, leaving Millicent to gape at wide shoulders covered in an immaculate evening coat. He took refuge in a group of older men clustered near the fireplace. There a place of honor had been reserved for Tuppy Swanwick, a family friend and ancient veteran of the Napoleanic wars. Valin tried to master his foul humor while listening yet again to Tuppy’s story of how he’d lost his leg at Waterloo. He could feel the tension draining from his body as he half attended to Tuppy’s quavering voice, and he’d almost forgotten about the inane Lady Millicent when that unusual old lady walked by in the company of other black-clad dowagers. As she passed she shot a look of amusement at him.

  “I see what you mean, Mrs. Whichelo. Permanently ill-tempered indeed.”

  Valin’s mouth dropped open, but before he could collect himself, the ladies passed out of the room and into the salon. Valin excused himself and followed them, but everyone was gathering to hear the pianist Aunt Ottoline had asked to perform this evening, and he lost sight of the woman in the crowd. Rows of gilded chairs filled the long chamber, and he was commandeered by his brother Acton to join the family in the front row.

  He sat down and twisted his neck to peer at the guests filing in, but the old lady was nowhere to be seen. He glimpsed a black gown beaded with jet disappearing behind a fern near the door, but Aunt Ottoline slapped him on the arm with her fan and hissed at him.

  “Saints and Providence give me patience!”

  “What?”

  “You were rude to Lady Millicent after all the trouble I took to get her here.”

  Valin’s scowl returned. “She’s a blatherer.”

  “A what?”

  “A blatherer. She drones on and on, endlessly, about nothing. I can’t marry her. I’
d shoot her on the honeymoon.”

  “Oh, Valin!”

  Ottoline’s voice rose to a whispering screech that reminded Valin of an angry parrot: hoarse and ear-splittingly loud. He watched her master her irritation with difficulty.

  “And what about the Honorable Miss Gorst?”

  “Too religious. She should have been a nun.”

  Ottoline pursed her lips. “You can’t say that about Lady Gladys.”

  “Lady Gladys is stupid.”

  “Va—lin,” Ottoline growled.

  “It’s not my fault. The woman thinks Scutari is an Italian dessert and that Istanbul is a kind of cow.”

  Aunt Ottoline closed her eyes briefly before soldiering on. “Then what about Miss Hayhoe?”

  “Miss Hayhoe possesses tact and intelligence.”

  His aunt began to smile.

  “Unfortunately she laughs like a zebra.”

  “Oh, Valin!”

  “Never mind that,” Valin said before his aunt could embark on a scolding. “Who is that curious old dowager in the tinted spectacles?”

  “Really, Valin, I can’t keep introducing you to young ladies and have you chew them up and spit them out. Soon no one will allow you to meet his daughter despite your rank and fortune.”

  “Aunt, who is the lady in the tinted spectacles?”

  “Spectacles? Oh, a friend of Lady Buxton’s down from the North Country. The Honorable Miss Agnes Cowper, I think her name was. She rarely comes to town. Prefers the wilds of Northumberland.”

  “Don’t invite her here again.”

  Ottoline slapped him with her fan again. “Nonsense. I can’t invite Lady Buxton and not include her guest. It isn’t done. Really, Valin, your manners are growing more and more barbaric. It’s the war. I told you not to go. You didn’t have to serve. I’ll admit you were gloomy and ill-tempered before you went, but when you came back you’d turned into a snarling beast.”

  Valin ceased listening to his aunt’s complaints. They were well rehearsed, and he wasn’t about to tell her the truth. He’d hidden it, buried it deep in his soul where it festered and corrupted his life, kept it silent since that day of horror when he was seventeen. The rest of the family didn’t need to know what had really happened, and he deserved to carry the burden of his guilt alone.

  Dragging his thoughts back to the present, Valin found that he was still furious at that bespectacled old lady for routing him. The next time he saw her, he’d teach her not to smirk at him. He’d reduce her to a quivering blancmange with his most terrifying grimace. The triumph would recompense him for the torture of looking for a suitable wife—a wife he didn’t want or merit.

  The Honorable Agnes Cowper hobbled from behind the giant fern as the pianist began to play. With little mincing steps she left the salon and mounted the curved staircase. Several young ladies hurried past her on their way to the concert, and she nodded at them, her lips plastered with a benign smile. She went upstairs, into the room reserved for the ladies’ necessities, and found herself alone.

  At once she straightened her bent back and crooked shoulders. Her chin lifted, and she swept the spectacles from her face. Shoving black lace half mittens up to her wrists, old Miss Cowper vanished, and in her place stood Emily Fox, known to her friends as Emmie, to many a scoundrel as Mrs. Apple, to Society variously as Miss Cowper, Lady Jane Effingham, and Françoise Marie de Fontages, Comtesse de Rohan.

  “Emmie Fox, you’re a devil, tormenting that man,” she muttered to herself.

  She hadn’t been able to resist taunting the marquess. He was vain, arrogant, and foul-tempered. With all his riches he was still dissatisfied with the world. He owned at least three houses she knew of, and yet he couldn’t summon the graciousness to forbear with silly but well-meaning young ladies. The man even had a hidden treasure. She’d heard about it from her mother, who had been fond of relating stories of the aristocracy and their grand houses. Agincourt Hall, the North family seat, stood among the grandest, and tales were told of the secret cache of gold concealed there by an Elizabethan nobleman. A man with all those houses and a treasure, too, had little of which to complain.

  However, Emmie had to admit her opinion of most men was as low as the belly of a Thames water rat. And perhaps her opinion of the marquess was influenced by the way her blood seemed to go from simmer to boil in a heart’s beat at the sight of him.

  Emmie had met lots of handsome men, but North seemed to provoke attacks of quivering knees and face flushes in her for no reason. Why should she develop vapors at the sight of his cavalry officer’s body and fierce gray eyes? His appealing mouth was always frowning, and he usually seemed about to explode into a tirade. So why did his presence send alternating chills and waves of heat whisking through her?

  Emmie shook her head. “This is no time to start dithering about some pretty, blue-blooded toff. Be about your business, Emmie, my girl.”

  Thrusting her spectacles in a skirt pocket, Emmie hurried through a series of connecting rooms to the gallery that extended the length of the house. The North gallery was famous for its expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows and for the collection of paintings that covered the opposite wall. Emmie peeked around a door, ascertained that the place was deserted, and hurried down the gallery. Its recently installed gas candle sconces cast a low gold light interspersed with shadows. She could barely make out the largest paintings—a Botticelli, a Titian, and a Rubens—but she swept by them and stopped in front of a small portrait of Henry VIII’s sister Mary, by Holbein.

  Glancing around to make sure she was still alone, Emmie grabbed her skirts and crinoline and pulled them up so that she could reach the tools concealed in a bag suspended from her waist. She removed tape, glue, a knife, and a rolled piece of canvas. Her fingers moving with swift assurance, she whipped the portrait off the wall, turned it over, and cut it out of its frame. It was the work of less than five minutes for her to replace the picture with the forgery she’d brought with her.

  The original was carefully slipped into a large pocket sewn into her petticoat. After concealing her tools once more, Emmie replaced the forgery on the wall. She stood back and eyed it to make sure it was straight. Satisfied, she whirled around and sped down the gallery. Before reappearing in the ladies’ withdrawing room she replaced her spectacles and resumed her Miss Cowper posture. Next, she sent word through a maid to Lady Buxton and her hostess that fatigue required her to leave early.

  Donning her cloak Emmie hobbled down the front stairs where Turnip was already waiting with her carriage. As the vehicle left the North grounds at a sedate pace, she drew the shades and fell back against the squabs. What a tiresome evening.

  Emmie smiled to herself. Tiresome except for the amusement of sparring with that dreadful marquess. Unfortunately, his faults didn’t seem to prevent her from feeling a most disturbing attraction to the man. It was fortunate that she would never see him again.

  It had been obvious from the moment she set eyes on the marquess that he thought his personal beauty, rank, and wealth relieved him of any obligation to be kind or courteous. She hated men who felt such an overblown sense of entitlement. She’d known too many like him, the most destructive and evil of which had been her stepfather, Edmund Cheap.

  But she needn’t think of him. He was dead. And he’d left her to cope with the consequences of his bad character—two stepbrothers and one stepsister left destitute and abandoned. She remembered her astonishment at discovering the children five years ago. Had it been that long already? Emmie smiled as she remembered. Yes, it had been that long because Sprout, the youngest, had been a babe. Flash, the oldest boy, had been five, and little Phoebe had been two.

  Her stepfather had been keeping another woman in St. Giles, a woman more suited to his tastes than Emmie’s gently born mother. Yet he’d done no better by this woman or her children. The mother had died shortly after Emmie’s stepfather, leaving the children to Emmie, who hadn’t known of the existence of this second family.

  As
the carriage rattled along the Strand, heading east, it slowed and turned into a side street. When it came to a halt Emmie pulled up the shade and leaned out the window. A scrawny shadow detached itself from a group of loiterers and stepped into the road.

  “Good evening, Wombie.”

  “Evenin’, Missus Apple.”

  Handing Wombie the painting, she waited only to see the forger walk quickly away from the carriage. Two of her men joined him as escorts, and they vanished beyond the light of a gas lamp. Emmie lowered the shade, and Turnip set the carriage in motion again.

  While she removed the white wig and makeup that aged her fifty years, Emmie mentally counted the funds she’d saved at her bank and added the profits from this latest theft.

  “Still not enough.”

  Anxiety returned like a small, filthy vulture to sit on her shoulder and weigh upon her soul. Her dear Flash, the oldest of her stepbrothers, would soon reach the age at which he must be sent to school. Emmie had promised herself that her siblings would not suffer the same fate she had. Emmie’s mother, Miss Jane Margaret Fox, had been an improverished gentleman’s daughter, naive and foolish. So foolish that she’d fallen prey to her employer’s wiles immediately upon being hired as a governess. Her mother’s gullibility still appalled Emmie.

  To trust a man in such a way was not within Emmie’s nature to comprehend. Shaking her head at the folly of it, Emmie wiped her face with a damp cloth from her makeup case. Of course Mother had been thrown into the streets once she’d conceived Emmie. If she hadn’t met and married Edmund Cheap, who knows what would have happened to her?

  But Cheap had been as bad as the so-called gentleman. He had been a swell mobsman, one of the thieves who preyed upon the wealthy. Of course, Jane Margaret hadn’t realized Cheap’s occupation at first. Eventually her husband’s character revealed itself. Faced with the enormity of her mistake, Jane Margaret chose to ignore it, remaining a lady in every way possible and raising her daughter as one.

  Unfortunately, after Emmie’s mother died, Cheap’s thieving skills deteriorated under the influence of drink. Emmie had been forced to live in more and more disreputable circumstances as her stepfather’s fortunes plummeted. By the time she was thirteen, Emmie had to take care of herself. The skills of a lady, which her mother had so lovingly taught, wouldn’t put food on the table in St. Giles. Learning the art of thieving from Cheap’s associates, Emmie had become one of the swell mob.